COSHH chemical risk assessment training
The method international clients ask for by name, taught on the chemicals actually sitting in your store.
- Duration
- Half day, 4 contact hours. Full day with your own inventory
- Level
- Implementation
- Legal status
- UK regulation, not Saudi law. Taught as method
- Prerequisites
- None
- Assessment
- A completed COSHH assessment marked against a guide, plus a knowledge check
- Certificate
- ITF certificate of completion
A course on assessing and controlling hazardous substances at work: reading safety data sheets, interpreting GHS labels, building a COSHH assessment and selecting controls. COSHH is a UK regulation and is not Saudi law. It is taught here as method, because it is the method many international operators and client HSE departments require.
- 01 Enquiry
- 02 Needs analysis
- 03 Programme design
- 04 Scheduling
- 05 Delivery
- 06 Assessment
- 07 Certification
- 08 Records
COSHH chemical risk assessment training sits at step 5 of the delivery cycle. You receive course materials and an attendance record.
A data sheet is not an assessment
The single most common mistake in this whole subject: a folder of safety data sheets filed as though it were a set of COSHH assessments.
They answer different questions. The data sheet describes the substance as supplied, by the supplier, for everybody. The assessment describes what happens when your people use it, in your quantities, in your room, with your ventilation, at your frequency. The same product can be trivial in one workplace and serious in another, and only the assessment knows which.
The second mistake follows from the first. Substances generated by a process get missed entirely, because nobody supplied them and so nobody sent a data sheet. Welding fume, wood dust, flour dust, cleaning chemicals mixed in a bucket. On most sites these are the genuine exposures and none of them appear in the folder.
So the practical works on the delegates' own store and their own tasks. The full-day version exists because a half day teaches the method and a full day starts the inventory, and sites that only buy the half day usually never start.
Four hours, or eight with your inventory
The half day is the method. The full day spends the second half building assessments across your actual chemical inventory, and it is the version most sites should buy.
| Session | What is covered | Time |
|---|---|---|
| What COSHH is, and its honest legal status | A UK regulation, the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, that is not Saudi law. Saudi legal duties sit in the Labor Law and MHRSD OSH requirements with GHS-aligned classification and labelling. COSHH is the structured way many international operators, EPC contractors and client HSE departments discharge those duties. | 0:30 |
| Exposure and health effects | Routes of exposure, acute against chronic effects, and why the dose and the duration decide. | 0:30 |
| The safety data sheet | Section by section, with delegates working on data sheets pulled from their own store rather than a sample. | 0:30 |
| GHS labels and pictograms | Reading a label properly, including a decanted container. | 0:30 |
| The assessment practical | Identify the substance and the task, who is exposed and how, evaluate the risk, decide controls, record it, and set the review trigger. | 0:45 |
| Controls in hierarchy order | Elimination, substitution with a less hazardous product, enclosure and local exhaust ventilation, dilution and dosing systems, procedures, then respiratory protection and PPE last. | 0:30 |
| Storage and spill | Segregation of incompatibles, decanting and labelling decanted containers, spill response and disposal. | 0:30 |
| Monitoring and health surveillance | When exposure monitoring becomes relevant and when to escalate to an occupational hygienist. | 0:15 |
What comes back in the folder
A COSHH assessment template
With a review trigger field, because an assessment with no review date is a snapshot of a day that has passed.
A GHS pictogram reference card
For the store wall. Pictogram, hazard class, and what it means for handling.
A chemical segregation chart
What must not be stored next to what. The cheapest control on this list and the one most often missing.
An SDS reading guide
Which of the sixteen sections drive an assessment and which are there for emergency responders.
The first batch of completed assessments
On the full-day version, built on your own inventory during the second half. Not a template, actual assessments.
What an assessor can do afterwards
- 01
Find the substances nobody supplied
Dusts, fumes and mixtures generated by a process. These are missing from every folder-based inventory.
- 02
Extract what matters from a data sheet
Six of the sixteen sections decide an assessment. The rest are for emergency responders and regulators.
- 03
Complete a COSHH assessment for a real task
Assessed against a marking guide covering completeness, control hierarchy and the review trigger.
- 04
Apply the control hierarchy to exposure
Ventilation and containment before respiratory protection, and knowing when RPE needs face-fit testing.
- 05
Segregate, decant and label correctly
Including the unlabelled decanted bottle, which is the most common finding in any chemical store.
- 06
Know when to escalate
To exposure monitoring, health surveillance or a specialist. Recognising the boundary is part of competence.
A prequalification pack that named COSHH
A cleaning contractor serving food plants in Dammam holds well over a hundred products across its depot and client sites, and a client's prequalification pack asked for COSHH assessments for every product used on that client's premises. The contractor had data sheets, and no assessments.
The full-day version ran in the depot. The morning taught the method on three of the contractor's own concentrates. The afternoon triaged the inventory by frequency of use, number of people exposed and conditions, then built assessments for the products used on the client's sites first. The segregation session checked the depot shelving against the chart, product by product.
The contractor ended up holding the first batch of completed assessments, a triage list for the rest, a segregation chart for the depot, and a certificate per delegate.
Four groups, four different exposures
Cleaning and hygiene teams are the single biggest group of delegates on this course, and decanting, dilution and mixing incompatible cleaners are the recurring hazards.
The largest exposed group on most sites
Cleaning and hygiene teams handling concentrates daily, usually decanting and diluting by eye.
- Assess a cleaning chemical as used, not as supplied
- Know which two cleaners must never meet in a bucket
- Label a decanted container so the next person is safe
Solvents, paints and process-generated hazards
Maintenance and workshop staff, where the significant exposures are often welding fume and dust rather than anything with a label.
- Identify process-generated substances with no data sheet
- Specify local exhaust ventilation rather than a mask
- Handle hot work and solvent tasks with the right control order
Operators handling reagents and dosing chemicals
Laboratory and water treatment operators, where quantities are small, concentrations are high and incompatibles are stored close together.
- Assess low-volume, high-concentration exposures properly
- Segregate a store where space is the binding constraint
- Know the spill response before the spill
Whoever puts their name on the assessment
The supervisor signing a COSHH assessment is attesting that the controls described are the controls installed. Most have never been told that.
- Judge whether an assessment in front of you is adequate
- Set review triggers that fire on change rather than on a date
- Refuse an assessment that scored residual risk on paper controls
The legal question, and three others
COSHH is British. Does it apply to us in Saudi Arabia?
Not as law. It applies as method. Your legal duties come from Saudi labour and OSH requirements and from your client contracts. COSHH is the structured way many operators discharge them, and many international clients ask for COSHH assessments by name in prequalification. We are not going to tell you a Saudi authority requires it, because that is not true.
We have hundreds of chemicals. Where do we start?
With the ones used most often, by the most people, in the worst conditions. The full-day version starts that triage in the room and you leave with the first batch of assessments done rather than a template and good intentions.
Is a safety data sheet the same as a COSHH assessment?
No, and this is the most common mistake in the subject. The data sheet describes the substance as supplied. The assessment describes what happens when your people use it, in your quantities, in your room, with your ventilation.
Do you cover cleaning chemicals specifically?
Yes, and they usually dominate the day. Cleaning and hygiene teams are the biggest single group of delegates, and decanting, dilution and mixing incompatible cleaners are the recurring hazards we see in audits.
Is the certificate recognised?
It is an ITF certificate of completion, and it records that the participant attended and met the assessment criteria on the day. It is not an accredited qualification. It is the kind of evidence a management system asks for under ISO 9001 clause 7.2 and its equivalents. If your buyer or regulator names a certificate issued under an accreditation scheme, tell us at enquiry and we will say plainly whether ours fits.
Can you run it in Arabic?
Yes. Arabic, English, or Arabic delivery with English material, which is the usual request for a mixed room. Confirm the language when you book, because it decides which trainer and which handouts are scheduled.
Do you come to our site?
Yes, and it is the default. On your site the exercises run on your own documents and processes, and the participants lose no travel time. We need a room, a screen, and the participants released from the floor for the whole session.
How many people can attend?
Awareness courses work up to about 20. Courses with assessed practical work cap at about 12 to 15, so every person does the exercise rather than watching it. These caps are our teaching judgement, not an external rule.
Who delivers it?
Practising auditors. The people teaching these courses spend their working weeks inside factories, warehouses, kitchens and offices carrying out audits, and the examples in the room come from that work. The standard every trainer meets is set out on the trainers page.
What if someone misses a day, or does not pass?
There is no certificate for partial attendance or a failed assessment. The participant can join the missed day or retake the assessment on a later run, and we tell you which person and why. We would rather report a gap than issue a record that says something untrue.
Usually bought alongside
Risk assessment
The general method. COSHH is the substance-specific case of it.
Read moreAwarenessHSE general safety awareness
The workforce day underneath this, for people who handle chemicals but do not assess them.
Read moreImplementationPermit to work
Where chemical work crosses into confined space, hot work or line breaking.
Read moreAwarenessISO 14001:2026 awareness
The environmental side of the same substances: storage, spill, disposal and the aspects register.
Read morePart of one system
Every division keeps records to the same standard, so the second one you need works the way the first one did.
Start the inventory in the room
Chemical control is usually a storage problem, a labelling problem and a records problem at once, and the assessment is what joins them up. Tell us roughly how many products you hold and who handles them.